I stumbled upon a link from Supertradmum through the blog - Ethereldasplace - which I highly recommend. The post was titled " Aren't "pre-marital unions" fornication? Moving out of the Church....." and linked to a Catholic News Service piece called "Surveys: German, Swiss Catholics reject many church teachings on family", written by one Cindy Wooden. I later learned that the Catholc News Service is owned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

I had determined to find out who owned the outlet because the piece made me suspicious and I wanted to find out if the author had an agenda. It turns out I was being unfair on Miss/Mrs. Cindy Wooden, because all of the questionable statements had actually been direct quotations from the German Conference of Catholic Bishops' "Summary of the responses from the German dioceses and archdioceses to the questions contained in the preparator". If I can fault her for anything, it is that she did not link to the document because this meant I was forced to spend considerable time trying to locate the English translation of the summary. Had it not been for the Web browser's translate function, I might never have found it since the English version of the German bishops' conference leaves a lot to be desired.

The report makes for grave reading, and that is the subject of much of my post. My complaint is with both the content and the style of the summary. Before that, in the interest of fairness, I would just like to quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church some sections which I deem relevant.  For sake of completeness, and to avoid the accusation of seletivity, the qutations are rather long.

On the natural law:

1954 ...The natural law expresses the original moral sense which enables man to discern by reason the good and the evil, the truth and the lie...
1955 The "divine and natural" law6 shows man the way to follow so as to practice the good and attain his end. The natural law states the first and essential precepts which govern the moral life.... Its principal precepts are expressed in the Decalogue. This law is called "natural," not in reference to the nature of irrational beings, but because reason which decrees it properly belongs to human nature...
1956 The natural law, present in the heart of each man and established by reason, is universal in its precepts and its authority extends to all men. It expresses the dignity of the person and determines the basis for his fundamental rights and duties...
1958 The natural law is immutable and permanent throughout the variations of history...

On marriage:

1603 "The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . God himself is the author of marriage."87 The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics...

1605 Holy Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: "It is not good that the man should be alone."92 The woman, "flesh of his flesh," his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a "helpmate"; she thus represents God from whom comes our help.93 "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh."94 The Lord himself shows that this signifies an unbreakable union of their two lives by recalling what the plan of the Creator had been "in the beginning": "So they are no longer two, but one flesh."

1614 In his preaching Jesus unequivocally taught the original meaning of the union of man and woman as the Creator willed it from the beginning permission given by Moses to divorce one's wife was a concession to the hardness of hearts.106 The matrimonial union of man and woman is indissoluble: God himself has determined it "what therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder."107
1615 This unequivocal insistence on the indissolubility of the marriage bond may have left some perplexed and could seem to be a demand impossible to realize. However, Jesus has not placed on spouses a burden impossible to bear, or too heavy - heavier than the Law of Moses.108 By coming to restore the original order of creation disturbed by sin, he himself gives the strength and grace to live marriage in the new dimension of the Reign of God. It is by following Christ, renouncing themselves, and taking up their crosses that spouses will be able to "receive" the original meaning of marriage and live it with the help of Christ.109 This grace of Christian marriage is a fruit of Christ's cross, the source of all Christian life.
1646 By its very nature conjugal love requires the inviolable fidelity of the spouses. This is the consequence of the gift of themselves which they make to each other. Love seeks to be definitive; it cannot be an arrangement "until further notice." The "intimate union of marriage, as a mutual giving of two persons, and the good of the children, demand total fidelity from the spouses and require an unbreakable union between them."

1652 "By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory."

2357 ... Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."142 They are contrary to the

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